Dodie Smith began her career as a successful playwright before World War II. Dear Octopus was first performed in 1938. She wrote the novels for which she is known: The One Hundred and One Dalmatians And I conquer the castle – years later. It’s easy to see why her nuanced play, her sixth, is rarely performed: it’s a funny but almost eventless portrait of a family of three generations, gathered for a golden wedding anniversary. What it needs is a tip-top, fastidious, perfectly pitched production and, with director Emily Burns from the National, this is exactly what it gets.
What unfolds is an extraordinary evening of domestic time travel – a marvel – in which we are taken back to the 1930s and to a grand English house outside Birmingham with sage green walls (elegant design by Frankie Bradshaw). The fascination and pleasure is in seeing how family life has changed overnight and stayed the same. For Smith, family was the octopus from whose tentacles you could never escape.
This production by Dorian Gray enhances the seriousness of the novel with a vaudeville brashness that borders on madness
Preparations for a party are in full swing and one of the grandchildren insists on rescuing a rose from an otherwise dead bunch of flowers: “Things should not die before they have had a chance to live,” she wisely notes. How people do and don’t take their chances in life is at the heart of this drama, which astutely examines aging (Smith was in her early forties when she wrote it). The inimitable Lindsay Duncan plays Dora, the 70-year-old who is celebrated: graceful, controlling, gracefully evil. Kate Fahy is great as her aging rival, nonchalant about her own efforts at cosmetic updates.
A love story develops in the younger generation, between Dora’s son Nicholas, who demonstrates a tempestuous lack of self-knowledge (played plausibly by Billy Howle), and the uptight Fenny, a companion/housekeeper and the human equivalent of the rose that saved must be. (beautifully played by Bessie Carter). Writing is a pleasure. I loved the funny speech in which Dora’s husband, Charles (a dignified Malcolm Sinclair), explains that he never achieved his ambition to become an MP because there were too many ‘little jobs’ to do around the house: shelves to put up , shelves to pick up. Despite (or because of) this, he is happy. The piece is a snapshot of pre-war contentment, a living historical piece, a tonic for our turbulent times.
Sarah Snook is known as Shiv Roy in HBO’s Succession. Her stellar performance combined ruthlessness with vulnerability and a latent mischief, and earned her two Golden Globes and an Emmy. And now, for a short stint in London’s West End, she plays Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s doomed narcissist, described in the novel as a “tall, graceful young man” with a “romantic olive face and a worn expression.” The casting is so extravagantly far from the mark that it intrigues. It’s an evening reliant on Snook’s brazen chutzpah, as she omnivorously emulates with stamina, comic grit and vampiric camp everyone in the novel (all 26 of them), from poisonous aristocrat Lord Wotton to painter Basil Hallward to Dorian’s jilted lover Sibyl Vane.
First performed by another actor in Sydney in 2020, Dorian Gray’s photo is lavishly directed and edited by Kip Williams. The conceit is to play with screens (today’s canvas) with a nod to today’s vanity of selfies and smartphone filters. The screen proves mightier than the stage (video design by David Bergman) and Snook is projected life-size, a sparkling cupid, in one incarnation, with auburn bob and smoldering cigar, wallowing in aristo absurdity, causing the novel to go up in smoke. Make no mistake: this is it Sarah Snook’s photoher celebrity vehicle, her window display, a rollickingly staged flirtation so wrong you can almost convince yourself it’s right.
The novel (1891) is a sinister moral tragedy in which Dorian leans toward good but finds evil more powerful. He has lived within a framework from which he cannot escape, on a canvas that he did not choose. He has become more of a concept than a person. The portrait he keeps hidden reveals his corrupt actions. Wilde’s darkest investigation concerns Dorian’s desire for immortal youth. This production undermines the seriousness of the novel and gives it a vaudeville brashness bordering on madness. The fatal ending is more of an exclamation point than a sobering response to Wilde’s exquisitely merciless conclusion.
Transforming Live Aid, the leading music event on two continents, into theater is a tall order – there is no chance of conveying the size of the 72,000-strong crowd at Wembley on July 13, 1985, nor the spontaneous tension of the main acts: David Bowie gives everything, Elton John delivers live-wire energy, Freddie Mercury punches the air in ecstasy. Live Aid was watched by 1.5 billion people worldwide. £150 million was raised for the Ethiopian famine – about £458 million in today’s money. It’s a shame that on the Old Vic stage the songs rarely run their course, but are organized into a small collage. But Just now for one day remains an excuse for beautiful tunes and features a fantastic ensemble, tightly directed by Luke Sheppard.
John O’Farrell’s book attempts to avert the danger of it being little more than a nostalgia feast by educating a younger audience. But like many other tribute pieces, it turns out to be dangerously safe, because it is narrative. It tries to be edgy by building in risk factors that no longer have any value, such as Bob Geldof’s fight to stop Margaret Thatcher from sticking with VAT. Still, Craige understands Els Geldof’s undeceived quality and I was mesmerized by Jo Foster, who performed Rebel, Rebel with flamboyant ambiguity: “You’ve got your mother in a whirl / She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl.” Amara from Abiona Omonua, who works for the Ethiopian Red Cross, sings A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall in such a beautiful voice, I wanted her to sing forever (cancel the rest of the show, we’ll just keep listening).
Star ratings (out of five)
Dear Octopus ★★★★
Dorian Gray’s photo ★★
Just for one day ★★★
• Dear Octopus is at Lyttelton, National Theatre, London until March 27
• Dorian Gray’s photo runs until May 11 at the Theater Royal Haymarket, London
• Just for one day is at the Old Vic, London until March 30